Howdy folks, how's it going?

So, I have to be completely honest. Unfortunately, this time my writing weekend had some poor timing, as it coincided with a family thing with a lot of travelling involved. So this chapter is a bit on the small side and is mostly the dialogue that was missing from the previous one. My apologies, but this was the best I could do given the circumstances.

Anyway, as always, huge shout out to Chaos Productions for his assistance.

And as always, I own neither BNHA nor WH 40K.

Enjoy.

/

Toshinori heard the question, heaved a long, drawn out sigh, spent a few moments in absolutely quiet, and then as is snapping out of a trance prepared to resume the conversation.

"What did young Midoriya do…?" He asked, dreading whatever it was that he was going to hear in response.

"…Is everything alright, Toshinori? You're not sounding too hot there…" The voice on the other side asked in return, clearly concerned. Normally, Toshinori would be an expert at deflecting and seamlessly changing subject, but right now he couldn't really muster the energy.

"I got some unfortunate news from Torino regarding something I asked him to look into. To be quite honest, it's gonna take me a while to be anything even remotely close to fine, but it's not really something I wish to dwell on right now. Not when there are more pressing matters to attend to." He admitted, even if the words were meant as much for himself as for her. "So, what was this about the boy?"

"Well, if you are sure about that…" Kaine replied hesitantly, clearly not convinced and sounding like she wanted to say more, but she knew him well enough to realize it wouldn't do much good. "To the matter at hand then, the kid didn't really cause any trouble, if that's what you were worried about. I just… haven't quite been able to figure him out yet. "

"I'm not sure if anyone other than his mother has, to be quite honest." The emaciated hero commented. "All the same, anything noteworthy you caught on to?"

"Do you happen to know if the kid's got any eyesight problems?"

Toshinori blinked. Out of all the things that coulda been said, that wasn't one he would've expected.

"Not that I'm aware of. There's definitely nothing of the sort on his record. Why do you ask?"

"It's just this thing I noticed. The kid has good enough instincts to figure out I had been tailing him from the train station all the way here. But as we got to talking I eventually realized that he's always looking in my general direction, but never actually AT me. And it sure doesn't seem to be cause he's shy." The heroine replied, her tone pondering, followed by a brief moment in which he could guess she was shrugging. "I dunno, I just thought it might help explain his… approach to firearms."

"Showed him to the firing range, then, I take it?"

"You got no idea, Toshinori. This goes beyond having subpar accuracy and trying to compensate through sheer quantity. To the kid, it's almost like shooting as many bullets as possible, as loudly as possible, is a sacrament." Came the reply, in a somewhat venting tone. "I asked him if he had anything in his arsenal without an excessive rate of fire, he looked like I had suddenly started speaking in tongues. As if he just straight up couldn't comprehend the very concept!"

Toshinori considered this. At this point, he was well-acquainted with the boy's eccentricities, distressingly so, it sometimes felt like, so nothing she was saying was particularly surprising. But still, it made him wonder, just how many of these oddities were the influence of his quirk, however it worked. Was there some kind of connection there that they were not seeing…?

He shook his head, pushing the thought aside. Not because it did not merit research, but because this was unexplored territory that needed to be considered carefully.

"Well, if you do not feel like you have much that you can teach him under these conditions, then maybe we could-"

"Oh hell no." He found himself cut off before he could finish the offer. "You remember the day we first met, Toshinori?"

"Of course, it's not something one can just forget." The number one hero replied, confused by the sudden turn. "Why?"

"Well, it finally clicked just why the kid was feeling so annoyingly familiar during the festival. It was him. He was the kid I bumped into that day, the kid who talked me into what I did."

That did surprise the emaciated man, enough so that he hacked out a bloody cough.

"R-really?" He replied, after a moment to gather himself and wipe his mouth clean. "Small world."

"You're telling me. Point is, though, that I owe the kid. I owe him big time." Kaina reply, and the Toshinori could hear a steely edge of resolve in her tone that he had seldom heard before. "I ain't about to give up just because of one little hurdle. I am going to do everything I can to help this kid be a hero, Toshinori. Not that I wasn't already planning on doing that before I realized, mind you, but you know what I mean."

Well, considering he had been the one to set the whole thing up in the first place…

"Yes, I suppose I do." He conceded with a slight chuckle, surprising himself, considering how devasted he had been feeling just as short little while ago. "So, what's your plan of action?"

"Nothing too extreme. Motivated as I am, there's only so much that can be done in a week, but I'll try to touch a little bit of everything, at least. I'm thinking on taking him out on patrol later today, see how he handles himself. Then I'll correct accordingly and go from there."

"Seems reasonable enough." Toshinori replied, pushing down a slight concern at the prospect. It would need to happen sooner or later, whether the world was prepared or not… "Keep me posted on how things go."

"Will do. Talk to you later then."

With that the call ended. But Toshinori allowed himself only a couple of minutes in the silence of the room, before getting up. There was more work to do, starting with a little chat with Nezu.

/

As Kaina finished her call, she stood there for a few moments, looking out the window of the apartment and into the city beyond. The neon signs of Narushada were flaring even brighter as the day's end was nearing. Time for action.

"Hey, Kid!" She called out loudly, turning away from the sight. For a brief moment there was no reaction, but then heavy stomping, progressively louder and louder, could be hear, all the way until the boy all but skidded to a stop in front of her.

"Yes, Boss?" He asked, with an odd mix of a soldier's discipline and a puppy's eagerness. Paying closer attention, the heroine concluded that nope, she wasn't imagining things, he really wasn't looking quite at her…

"Go suit up." She commanded. "We're going out on patrol in 20."

He grinned widely at that, a grin that made him look, in her humble opinion, absolutely deranged. Something else they were gonna have to work on, then…

/

Someone in the recent reviews was commenting on Kaina's color schemes and Izuku's perception. Well, there ya have it.

Hope what little there was this update was enjoyable.

Anyway, next up, we'll see how an actual patrol will pan out.

Cya all on the next one, stay safe and take care.